Community News 2025 03 03

Heartwood Community Forest
The first of more than 47,000 trees are being planted to create a new forest across eastern and southern Derbyshire and Derby.

Derbyshire's Heartwood Community Forest is our ambitious programme and grant scheme that aims to make communities, farms and businesses more attractive and naturally diverse.

It will enable landowners to increase biodiversity and make their own contribution to tackling climate change. It will also benefit the wider environment and people's health and wellbeing.

The grants will support landowners by covering 100% of the costs for all aspects of woodland creation, and their ongoing maintenance for up to 15 years.

Have your say on Derbyshire's future

A reminder that we'd like your views about plans to create one council for Derbyshire, instead of the current nine.

We've created a quick online poll about the future of local government in Derbyshire. Currently the county has a two-tier system – one county council and eight district or borough councils.

The Government announced the biggest shake up of local councils in a generation, requiring all areas to move to a single-tier unitary council system – meaning just one council delivering all services. Parish and town councils aren't affected by the Government's plans.

This decision will shape the future of local services for decades and Derbyshire has until 21 March 2025 to put forward a proposal that best serves all communities.

Read Council Leader Barry Lewis's statement on local government reorganisation and have your say in our simple poll. It'll only take you a minute.

The poll closes on Sunday 9 March 2025.

We're fostering friendly
We've been recognised as a 'Fostering Friendly' organisation by the UK's leading fostering charity.

Fostering Friendly is a programme designed by The Fostering Network to encourage employers to support fostering and foster carers.

We've been recognised for our fostering-friendly policies that mean our staff who are also foster carers get flexibility around their working arrangements for commitments such as training and assessments, attending panels and review meetings.

We're now part of Foster for East Midlands Councils and we're always recruiting for new foster carers. We provide full training and support, a package of allowances and benefits and offer many different types of full and part-time fostering opportunities to fit in with your work, family and lifestyle.

You don't need any special qualifications or training and as long as you're aged 21 or over we welcome applications from people from all backgrounds. Fostering changes lives. You can find out more about fostering with us here: www.derbyshire.gov.uk/fostering

Online information sessions for carers
Do you care for someone who is concerned about their memory or has been diagnosed with dementia?

Our Derbyshire Dementia Information and Advice Service – which is provided by the Alzheimer's Society – is hosting several online information sessions to help carers access support and advice.

Sessions include:

Introduction to Adult Care – Thursday 6 March
Senses and memory loss – Thursday 20 March
Equipment at home – Thursday 3 April
Living well as a carer – Thursday 17 April.

The sessions are on Zoom and run from 5.30pm to 7pm. You can just listen in or ask as many questions as you'd like.

To attend, or for more information, please email derbyshire@alzheimers.org.uk or call 01332 208 845.

Pharmacy survey
Do you use local pharmacy services? If so we'd like to hear your experiences.

Your views are important to make sure that pharmacy services in Derby and Derbyshire meet local people's needs.

Please fill in the short Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment survey here.

The assessment is carried out every three years and this year Derby City Council is running the survey on behalf of both Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council.

The deadline for completion of the survey is Friday 14 March 2025.

Peak District accessibility
Here's a great chance to share your thoughts about accessible walking, cycling and other opportunities in the Peak District.

Which accessible routes are most important to you and where do you think improvements are needed?

Please tell all in a consultation that the Peak District National Park Authority is running with Active Travel England.

The consultation has an interactive map where you can pinpoint your favourites and places that could be better. This will help the Peak Park join up the pieces of the active travel jigsaw for the future. The consultation closes on Sunday 16 March.